We don’t need no stinkin’ instruments

Your typical high school might have one, maybe two a cappella groups. Three if it’s lucky. But Lexington has seven, and all of them put on a show last Friday at Cary Library.

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Bryan Mahoney/Staff Writer

The Lexington High student saw the art in hand-clapping and beat-boxing two years ago. He saw the range involved in a cappella music, where raw talent and a strong voice play a big part in bridging the musical and artistic gaps normally filled by instruments. He saw that it was for him.

But it wasn’t. Not yet. Tried as he did, the junior fell short in his audition for the Pitchpipes, the longest-running all-male a cappella group at the school. That turned around last year, and today he’s not only one of the group’s soloists but is looking to study music in college and to make singing a career.

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“I didn’t know what the experience was going to be like,” Levy said Friday. “It’s nice to work in an environment where no one’s telling you what to do. It’s great to have that freedom.”

Your typical high school might have one, maybe two a cappella groups. Three if it’s lucky. But Lexington has seven, and all of them put on a show last Friday at Cary Library.

The program was the first of its kind at the library, according to high school senior Michael Passarini, a member of the library’s Teen Advisory Board.

“We’ve had a lot of different events but we never had a musical event,” he said.

Brian O’Connell, director of choral music for Lexington High School, oversees the groups. Some are all boys, others are all girls. Mixed Nuts has a bit of both. And all of them, O’Connell said, are focused on making art.

He puts on workshops for high school teachers who feel a cappella groups might compete with their existing choral programs. Not so, O’Connell said — they instead support them. Many groups’ members also are involved in school choruses, and the school is where they get most of their instruction. Some, like Levy, choose to take lessons outside of school, which in turns helps the quality of the curricular group.

At the event Friday, groups packed the library’s meeting room. They have names like Rock, Paper Scissors and Guacamole. They sing contemporary tunes and songs from their parents’ and grandparents’ time.

Each performance is like its own football game, but once you’re on the field there’s no communication with your coach. Every player has to remember a different play that will last several minutes, and your adversary is your own nerves.

And like every good team, the coach is rooting you on when you come out of the locker room.

“Go smoke the house,” O’Connell exclaimed as the singers took the stage.